Anthropocene Campus | An Ecosystem of Excess

An ever growing ocean of plastic in the middle of the ocean, consisting of the trash of civilization, equally poisonous for the human being and the environment: for Pinar Yoldas, this is cause to see this plastic soup as an evolutionary soup and to advance evolution a step ahead. In the artist conversation, she presents her EcoArt around the subject of evolution and excess (until min. 41:30). Then the view of Regine Hennge looks at quite a different excess, that of the largest biomass on the planet: microbes, bacteria, and viruses. Each of us carries a few kilograms of these in our bodies. Views of biofilms, microbe megacities and microarchitecture of microbes. And the hope for a form of microbe that could at some point degrade plastic. Until then, plastic is immortal. Discussion begins at 1:10:00. With an introduction by Heike Mertens, Schering-Stiftung, Berlin.

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Pinar Yoldas is an interdisciplinary artist and doctoral student at in the Media Arts and Science program at Duke University. Regine Hengge is a professor for microbiology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.